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F. X. Reid - The Movie ?
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Victor Semantics
.PP
There now seems little or no truth in the rumour that Sylvester Stallone
is to portray F. X. Reid in the forthcoming film, `Swedish Hot Wet Lust'. Your
FACS FACTS fact ferreter succeeded in tracking down the celebrated polymath
in his Germyn St. Club and in his usual brusque and penetrating manner, Reid
derided both the suggestion and this reporter's handwriting and syntax.
.PP
"I have never heard of Mr. Stallone, of course," declared Reid. When I mentioned
the word `Rambo', he leant back languorously in his leather armchair and recited
.DS
	"A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles
	Je dirai quelque jour vos naissance latentes"
.DE
.PP
I put it to him that the formidable perpetrator of `Reid's Caveat'\** is 
.FS
`In program proving, only the presence of bugs in ones proof is ascertainable,
not their absence'. Reid adds that this applies in particular to the
verification of programs for doing machine assisted verification of programs.
.FE
not normally associated with lust, whether it be hot, wet or Swedish. In reply,
Reid muttered something about a package tour to Stockholm, but agreed that the
whole thing was `Ada-ish'\** and wondered where I could have got the idea.
.FS
i.e. monstrous, preposterous, unlikely to work, lacking a formal semantics,
technically meaningless etc.
.FE
.PP
I spoke to the producer of the proposed film, who prefers to be known by
his UNIX username, `ds'. He told me that the work is to be based on Reid's
PhD thesis.
.PP
"There's this chapter on the wash-rinse cycle and - delicate fabrics. Well, 
that put me in mind of, well, ladies' - $things$. Anyway, I thought - here's
Reid, a young man, working on his thesis, stuck, pacing up and down in his attic
in Heidelberg, can't think of a thing to write.
.PP
"Then ! He goes on this package tour to Stockholm and...there it all is !"
.PP
`ds' preferred not to go into detail about the plot except to add that it would
be true to the original - "even down to the typo on page 241". 
.PP
I put it to `ds' that they layman might find Reid's thesis a little dry.
.PP
"Especially the part about dry-cleaning," quipped `ds'. "Seriously, though,
I don't think so. Not the way $we're$ going to do it, anyhow. You see, I view 
Reid's work within the framework of a Lakatosian dialectic, so, for example,
we're portraying Reid's discovery of the Redundant Sock Theorem as a ballet
in which the actor playing Reid dances violently back and forth between two
groups of big blonde girls wearing costumes made of socks stitched together.
They represent the antithetical dualism of Proof and Refutation, you understand.
We're hoping to get Joan Collins to symbolise the Global Counterexample. And
I've been on to Mandelbrot about the special effects. He hasn't replied yet.
Maybe there weren't enough neologisms in my letter."
.PP
I asked `ds' who he was to cast as Reid. Hadn't he approached Sylvester Stallone ?
.PP
"Well, Sylvester was very $keen$, you know, but all things considered he isn't
really $"right"$ for the part. Not really very $cerebral$. And whoever we cast
has got to be cerebral. We $did$ try approach Professor $N sub 1$\**, but he was
.FS
The Professor has asked us to keep his identity a secret, especially from his
wife.
.FE
at a conference on VDM in Stockholm. Or was it VDU ? VD-something, anyway. Great
pity. $N sub 1$ has exactly the sort of dogmatic egomania that's so
characteristic of Ried's thesis work.
.PP
"Actually, now I come to think of it, $all$ the professors I tried were in
Stockholm. It's funny that."
.PP
Did `ds' have any director in mind ?
.PP
"We've had Michael W----- hanging on the door bell ever since the project
was announced. I fancy someone a little less overtly lubricious. Ken
R------, perhaps, or Federico F-------. It's a pity Hitchcock isn't still
with us. This'd be right up his street.
.PP
Whim-Wham books are said to be considering bringing out a `book of the film'.
I spoke to one of their marketing people, Lionel Hampton-Wyxe. A 500 page work
in German about the stochastic theory of automated launderettes was not to
$everybody's$ taste, surely.
.PP
"Well, of course, we'll wait to see how the flick goes down with the
punters. If it's what we in the ad. business call `a hit', then we'll get
a couple of million copies out of the house and into the shops before you
can say `market forces'. You see people will $buy$ books-of-the-film
even if they never read them. A great deal of modern publishing practice is
based on that simple observation, as a matter of fact, John."
.PP
Whether or not Whim-Wham books bring out `$Ueber$ $Wascheverarbeitung$ $und$
$den$ $Enscheidungsproblem$', 'ds' is ready with the spin-offs.
.PP
"Oh, yes. The production lines are rolling. By the next FACS meeting, we plan
to have a stall with F. X. Reid T-shirts, F. X. Reid mugs, OHP slides with
a special F. X. Reid logo, F. X. Reid posters, F. X. Reid underwear, F. X. Reid
socks - you name it !
.PP
"We've also running a competition. First prize is a package tour to
Stockholm, of course. Runners up get copies of the `Collected Internal
Memoranda' and his masterpiece `Advanced Hacking'."
.PP
But what, finally, does Reid himself make of all this ? I reported back
to him.
.PP
"Well, it had to happen, I suppose. When you consider my contributions to the
Discipline - and reflect what it would be like without them - I see that
you shudder - then it would be unjust not celebrate it in some manner. Of
course I would have preferred something a trifle less $vulgaire$ - Mike
Tippet comes out with a colourable opera now and again - but what else
can you expect from a bunch of computing scientists ?"
.PP
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[ There will be no Victor Semantics column next week. Victor will be away on
his annual package tour to Stockholm ]
.R